The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison (11 page)

After that first visit Joanna told me that she had to leave for Malaysia and asked if I could continue to keep an eye on Garth. I promised to do my best to visit him whenever I could. She assured me it would only be for a couple of weeks, but then she ran into difficulties in Malaysia when she lost her passport and ended up being away for almost six weeks. I visited Garth every week and also began to target the jail in earnest to see what I could do. By the time she returned I had some projects in place and, just as we had both secretly expected, I was completely caught up in prison life and the inmates and staff.

It wasn’t easy or pleasant work and in the earlier days the place had me frequently in tears. I had quite a battle with my own self-confidence as I realised the hugeness of the prison and the hugeness of its problems. Firstly, as I have said, there were the prison guards themselves. Their wages were paltry and meant that they were confined to living in the accommodation provided by the jail. Their tiny homes were usually located in the tough, dingy and dangerous districts, within walking distance of Bang Kwang, teeming with junkies and gangster-like teens. I visited one home during the wet season and I couldn’t believe how awful it was. The guard and his family had to lift the TV and shabby furniture off the floor because of the amount of water around, plus there was a problem with the sewage system so the water was not only filthy and smelly but full of dead rats.

The inmates at Bang Kwang could not have guessed at the abject state of the guards’ dwellings. The only guy I knew who refused to do this was Chavoret; as soon as he could scrape some money together he moved his young family to a safer part of the city. In his memoirs he relates how he had to supplement his wages by playing music at weddings and parties at the weekend. Some of the other guards that I met told me about losing babies because they couldn’t afford the proper medical treatment required; others were struggling to look after sick children and to keep food on the table. These men seemed grounded down in the depression of their home life and the depression of their work life. It is no wonder to me that so many of them are open to bribery from well-off inmates or their colleagues in the outside world. They were constantly at risk from attack in the job and most of the inmates regarded them as if they were mere dirt on the side of the road.

All of society’s ills were locked up in the prison—from frightened first-timers to elderly junkies to unrepentant killers and rapists. A lot of the inmates were sick, undernourished, and victims to the toughies who banded together to beat up, steal from and rape their colleagues.

On an aesthetic level there isn’t much in the way of natural light in the buildings, and you will just have to believe me when I say that the smell of 8,000 stale and desperate men would almost knock you over. It is quite simply grim. I don’t think that Bang Kwang is a place where a criminal can be rehabilitated, unless you consider it such a hell-hole that you wouldn’t be prepared to ever risk ending up in it again, and not because you have seen the light and want to live a good life to atone for past mistakes. That’s fine, I suppose, as long as you aren’t an addict. The fact is, however, that the sentences are so long that not many people make it back out again, except for those who know someone important or who come from a country that has a functioning treaty in place. Some of those who have murdered are paid hit men and can usually rely on their bosses or gang members getting them back out at some stage. The really sad thing is that people like junkies and paedophiles get absolutely no help to deal with their demons, and if they are fortunate enough to be released, after 30 years or so, they can only continue in pursuing their (un)natural inclinations and might well end up, before too long, back behind bars again.

The western inmates are generally articulate and intelligent and they read any legal literature they can get their hands on in order to build their cases or appeals for transfer to their own countries. Some of the Thais are highly educated and are aware of their rights. It’s the lower class, lowly educated guys that I worry about. Some of these are orphaned or crippled with sickness or old age and nobody seems to care about them. Society has apparently forgotten them and they have nobody to fight for their basic rights, and nothing to look forward to. You would be surprised at how many didn’t realise they were breaking the law when they were arrested, or how many of them maintain their innocence. It’s heart-breaking. You wouldn’t treat animals as badly as some of the men have been treated. Prisoners, no matter what they have done, deserve to be treated as well as anyone else. They are human beings who have made mistakes and need help; it is wrong for society to forget them and ignore them, discounting them as if they have been dead for years. Even my good friend Chavoret wonders at the time spent teaching inmates a trade in the prison workshops—what’s the point if, on your release, no one wants to hire you because of where you spent your last few years? It says a lot about a society; how it treats the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak.

One of the first projects that I set up in Bang Kwang with Chavoret involved the elderly inmates. These were the men who had survived many decades of imprisonment, and, therefore, decades of insufficient and un-nourishing food, insufficient or no medical care at all, and decades of violence, either at the hands of the prison guards or other inmates. These are the men that tend to be the forgotten ones, with few visitors and even fewer letters. They try to stay out of trouble and walk about with their bowed heads, fearful of attracting attention; but they got mine. After their years behind bars they are vulnerable to sickness and depression, and when I looked at them I often got the feeling that most of them were just waiting to die. One of the first things to go is their eyesight. Something needed to be done. Around this time I received a substantial sum of money from a kindly, well-to-do Australian woman who was living in Holland. She sent me the money and told me to use it as I saw fit. An idea had been formulating in my head for a while, and this money arrived in perfect time for me to put my plan into action.

With Chavoret’s help, I organised for a team of optometrists with eye-testing machines to come into the prison. I helped them to set up in a room that was made available to us. Then the elderly inmates lined up outside, quietly but expectantly. They were all individually tested and then prescribed with the required lenses, which were made up later in the shop. The opticians said that their eyes were far worse than they should have been. Some of the prisoners had lost the sight in one eye and others had developed cataracts and other growths which obscured their vision. We had the glasses made up for less than $16 a pair and one of the happiest days of my life was when Chavoret and I were able to hand these men their glasses. Most of the recipients were aged between 58 and 82 and they were so docile and obedient that they literally held their glasses aloft in trembling hands, waiting to be given permission to put them on.

The room quickly filled with their laughter when they did put on their glasses; some of them were seeing the faces of their friends for the first time in years and howled at how much they had aged before realising that they probably looked just as old and weathered, if not more so. I don’t think I expected it to be so emotional, but it was. I found myself in tears when one old guy, named Wut, shuffled up to tell me how he had prayed for years that he might have glasses in order to be able to read his Bible again. He was beaming from ear to ear and thanked me for not only giving him back his eye sight but also his faith.

After a while I addressed them to warn those who had needed particularly high prescriptions that they could probably expect to experience nausea and bad headaches for the first couple of days. I also implored them to put their names on their spectacle cases, now that they could see to write their names again. They giggled like children at this. Those glasses meant that they could partake a little in life again, either through reading books and magazines, or writing to family for the first time in years. It was a lesson to me about not taking my good eyesight for granted.

It’s all about simple acts of kindness that can mean a great deal to those who have little. Other projects in Bang Kwang involved me giving out 53 bags of toiletries and food to the neediest inmates. Another time I was able to give pens, paper, sarongs and pillowcases to 100 inmates. The elderly prisoners were delighted to receive a big home-cooked meal one afternoon, which I helped to serve to the delighted men.

The thing is, I depend on acts of kindness and donations from the likes of that generous woman in Holland. These men have nothing and I just want to be able to give them little luxuries whenever it is possible. You just can’t begin to imagine the dreariness and grimness of their existence. They have forgotten what it is like to walk on a beach or have a cup of coffee at a stall, or hold someone they love. They are always so appreciative, especially the Thai prisoners. The foreign prisoners are much more businesslike and do not shy away from asking me to do something for them in the outside world. I write letters for them and translate documents for them, and keep them informed of their rights and their embassies. But maybe the most important thing is that I visit these men and listen to their worries.

Visiting prisoners is my entrance to a different world and I feel very privileged when the men are candid about their lives on the inside and what exactly goes on. Penis mutilation was all the rage not so long ago and it was a badge of honour for me that some of the men felt they could discuss this with me. The important thing is not to judge. I have no idea how I would cope with being stuck behind bars for the rest of my life. When you have a community of only men there is a threat to the individual’s masculinity. The fairer sex makes men feel big and strong. Therefore when they are missing, men tend to resort to aggression to impose the stamp of their sex. Of course, for some the presence of the ‘ladyboys’ is enough to make them feel like real men. These are the effeminate men who dress, look and sound like women and they find themselves to be like trophy wives in Bang Kwang. The men who can’t cope with these ladyboys have to find another outlet.

Some choose to educate themselves and they take full advantage of the prison library and also the opportunity to do college courses from the prison as arranged by embassy staff or concerned families. Others discover the artist within and become very creative. Others open up a drug-dealing/prostitution business with help from their contacts outside. Others concentrate on their body, and look to differentiate themselves that way.

Some African and Japanese prisoners show interested parties how to insert a ball of polished glass or stone into the shaft of their penises, which duly causes it to swell up with a permanently huge head. Some go further and cut the head so that it resembles a butterfly. Most of the time the inmates end up in dreadful pain, with their poor infected penises, and have to be rushed to hospital to have the offending object removed. If they are lucky enough to escape infection they can show off their penises as they would a fancy tattoo. Every man wants to be a character and they choose their way to survive with a sense of themselves. For men who have been behind bars for 20 years or more they might well have forgotten who they were on the outside or where they came from. It becomes very important to have ‘something’ in Bang Kwang, whether it is a nice watch, a thirst for knowledge, or a swollen penis.

I had to be careful when I was giving things to the inmates—I had to be careful that they, and not the guards, were the actual recipients. You can’t be naive in this line of business and I, also, have to be sensitive about people’s feelings. Therefore, I would pass on donations, infrequently, to guards and officials. It’s a question of balance and common sense. When I donate food and stuff to the inmates they have to sign a sheet of paper to say they received it. I know all their handwriting by now and the prison officials are well aware that I know all the recipients personally. One of the more outspoken prison guards actually said to me, ‘You’re so smart!’ And we both knew what he meant.

I can’t say aloud that I’m afraid that the guards will take something that’s meant for the inmates, and the guards can’t say aloud that they are affronted by my lack of trust in them. That’s what I mean about being sensitive. I simply explained to the guard that I had to account for every cent that my sponsors sent me, and prove to them that the inmates were benefiting from their money instead of me. He nodded and replied.

‘Oh right, I see what you mean. That makes sense alright.’

Whether there was any irony in his words I’ll never know.

The Thai justice system is, on the whole, very corrupt. That’s not to say that there aren’t good police/prison officers and officials who believe that it’s the rest of the world at large that is corrupt. Thailand is a land of many contradictions; the people are obsessive about personal hygiene and wearing nice clothes, while some of their streets are full of rubbish and dead dogs, at least in the area where I live. There is an unfair judicial system run by, mostly, highly moral people. The police are corrupt but it’s easy to see why—the starting wage for a police officer is a mere $100 a month and the new officer has to use his paltry wage to buy his own gun and motorbike. I don’t agree with corrupt police officers or prison guards but I appreciate how their circumstances don’t leave them with many alternatives.

Of course, the corruption doesn’t stop with the little guys. I frequently act as translator for western prisoners in court and have seen plenty of corrupt lawyers who will promise you the earth, moon and stars, take all your family’s money, and do absolutely nothing in exchange for your trust. There are also corrupt judges, although I’m glad to say that they are not all bad. I have met some good judges and have taught them English and worked with them. While I’m aware of all of this I have to remain positive and I choose to see the good in people. I have to. How can I encourage someone to do better and use their role in a more positive way if I don’t treat them with respect and kindness? I have no use for anger, or self-righteous indifference. When I’m dealing with paedophiles I know that most of them were abused themselves as children, and I just can’t forget that and treat them like rubbish. Their own horrific childhoods certainly don’t justify their assaulting a new generation of kids but it does afford us some kind of understanding as to what is wrong with them, and how to go about rehabilitating them.